Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => The Coffee Corner => Topic started by: Jeremy Roussak on July 28, 2018, 04:49:04 pm
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Well, we tried. When I started to moderate the forums - was it really only four months ago? - I did so in part because I thought we could and should be capable of conducting robust but sensible political debate which could be enjoyed by those who like such things and tolerated by the rest.
I was wrong.
Political discussions have overwhelmed the Coffee Corner, to the near-exclusion of any other topics. They have been conducted with more, far more, heat than light. Entrenched positions have merely been restated ad nauseam and I for one have found them tedious in the extreme to plough through. Worse, the presence of such overt acrimony has driven away photographers who joined to learn, teach and talk about photography.
This last has led us - Kevin, Chris, Debra and me - to decide collectively that political discussions are tainting the Luminous Landscape “community” (in quotes because it is a word I cordially dislike, but in this context I can think of none better) to the extent that they cannot be allowed to continue.
Therefore, as from now:
- all political threads in the Coffee Corner will be locked;
- any new political thread will be summarily locked or deleted;
- the Coffee Corner will revert to being a board primarily for discussion of photography-related topics (LuLa’s raison d’être);
- topics which have no photographic element to them will be allowed - I see no reason why we should be precluded from discussing other matters of interest - but political discussions will not.
Whether a particular topic is “political” or not, and whether if it blends politics and photography it can properly be regarded as the (acceptable) latter and not the (unacceptable) former or is truly politics with a veneer of photography are matters which will lie wholly within my discretion. For the avoidance of doubt (as we lawyers like to say), my unshakeable view is that, in this context at least, climate change is politics.
I’m disappointed that this step has proved necessary, but there it is. The description of the Coffee Corner has been changed to reflect this new regime.
Jeremy
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Good decision.
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Fair enough. I said at the beginning that we should let you do your moderating without much in the way of comment and I think, for the most part, people did that and, for the most part, you've done a good job. My comments below reflect on the few, rather than the many, of your interventions.
Whilst you still retain that role, I will venture one piece of feedback in relation to the political threads. I think that you were not active enough with the subtle, gentle, moderation that could have steered people away from trouble sooner. No doubt it's tough and time consuming, but my experience in the past was that timely (and sometimes frequent) "settle it down, guys" or "you're over the line, Phil" or similar served to swing people toward the level of discourse that was requested. Locking or hiding of threads merely frustrates people, particularly those who had said nothing wrong and had legitimate replies, and the frustrations ultimately spills over into other threads.
The concept of punishing all in order to get the many to influence the few doesn't work when the many have no real influence. Public expression of dissatisfaction (followed up some times with acknowledgement of improvement) works well to establish the boundaries and for posters to become familiar with the expectations. Locking or hiding or deleting entire threads, imo, is rarely required. Individual posts? Sure, sometimes. And I know that you did edit posts from time to time where you felt the content was inappropriate - that was good.
More grey responses, less black and white. More small pushes typically results in less large ones being needed. To some that comes across as treating the posters like children with the expectation that they should already know better. But online is different. There's no physical interaction and intent and emotion and all of that can be so easily misconstrued, particularly when you add in wider cultural experiences and backgrounds. It's nothing new. It was like this in the 80s when I was on BBS chat boards and then the early 90s in newgroups or in IRC (before it became the utter den of iniquity) and then from the late 90s when the public web brought us message boards in various forms, and now through to social media.
I'll also take a moment to say thanks for doing what you're doing as I know it isn't easy, and to apologise for my contribution to the end result - I never intended anything inappropriate, but I have no doubt that sometimes some people will have seen it that way, because intentions are often blind to reality. My apology extends to everyone who might have felt my comments were out of line.
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As much as I think the decision is unfortunate, I wish to thank you, Jeremy, for your moderating efforts so far.
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The decision was based on business. This decision was based on feedback we received many times and from many readers and was jeopardizing the welfare of this site. When subscribers and readers are leaving we need to rethink things. Chris and I gave this a second chance and a fair go at it. Jermey has done an excellent job and shown more patience than Chris or I would have and most certainly Micahel if he was still here. I have no doubt that Micahel would have cut this off a long time ago.
Let's get back to what this site and forum is all about, Photography.
Thank you for your understanding.
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A good move. Too many political arguments are based on emotion & ignorance rather than, in fact in opposition to evidence. Closing down some of the counter-factual idiocy is well overdue. Let's get back to photography.
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The decision was based on business. This decision was based on feedback we received many times and from many readers and was jeopardizing the welfare of this site. When subscribers and readers are leaving we need to rethink things.
I wish that decision hadn't been necessary, and I personally enjoyed watching the fireworks (as well as, occasionally, I hope not in an excessively incendiary manner, contributing to them), but your justification is persuasive as far as I'm concerned. This is too useful a site to jeopardize its economic viability in order to host political debates that are extraneous to its raison d'être.
The principal reason I was drawn to LuLa in the first place was access to photographers who were more experienced, and expert, than I was. But I also was impressed by the air of civility that Michael Reichmann cultivated on his site. Very Canadian, I always thought, compared to the sharp elbows we tend to employ south of the border.
Another attraction for me is the site's international character. The United States is so big, so powerful, and so isolated by various factors—not just the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans, but also our own self-absorption—that I appreciate the exposure to different points-of-view I find here, even if they occasionally make me uncomfortable, from contributors in other countries.
I don't think there is anything that has happened in the United States since we became the dominant international economic and military power that is comparable to the election of Donald Trump. Trump has provoked intense reactions, mostly negative, almost everywhere. And also robust arguments supporting him from a few contributors to this site, whose comments often irritated me. Thank you, Gentle Men.
I can't argue with your business decision, but I hope it doesn't provoke the political partisans to go elsewhere.
Because those who might be tempted to walk may be talented photographers and, despite my advanced age, I suspect I could still learn something from them.
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I couldn't have possibly said it better myself. Thank you Chris Kern.
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A shame to have to close politics as a subject, but the writing was on the wall.
Firstly, I wouldn't want to have to be the moderator to wade through it all.
Secondly, instead of a thread opening with a request for help, it's a subject that opens with someone offering an opinion they know to be true. Nothing wrong with that, but there is a point where enough people have chimed in and we know what will happen if the thread continues in the same vein
There is a belief that the intense reactions seen in current politics is unique. That's probably nonsense. This is nothing compared to what I recall of the Vietnam war and anti-apartheid era. What I just can't recall is how it felt then. Which feels a bit weird. Anyway.
What I think is different now is the presence of social media and web chat rooms which reflect back to people their own opinions and values. People now live in an echo chamber and become more than uncomfortable when their values are questioned.
This has always happened but seems more intense now. In the past we had to deal face to face with those who disagreed with us. As a teenager this meant being patient while those who were clearly deranged spoke. On the other hand we knew we had some 30 seconds to offer a polite-ish counter argument, and that did focus the mind wonderfully. That's not to say it was a better world, not at all. Just that times change but there is not much new under the sun. People still have the same underlying needs and emotions as they did 10,000 years ago.
Perhaps we should start some threads on cat photos.
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Perhaps we should start some threads on cat photos.
I did...it didn't go very far.
Cats on catnip (photos) (http://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=125455.msg1051047#msg1051047)
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The political threads were a bit like Photographers on Catnip.
The experiment of allowing politics had ample opportunity to show that it could remain civilized, so I think the decision to ban politics is a wise one. I come to LuLa for photographs and discussion of all matters photographic, and I am sure that Michael would agree with the decision to end the squabbling.
I thank the LuLa team for the decision, and I thank Jeremy for his excellent performance of the difficult job of moderation during these turbulent times.
-Eric
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Politics and climate change gone; good. Now we need to get rid of the personal attacks throughout the forum!
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Politics have poisoned everthing else in society, didn't expect anything different here
Kent in sd
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http://www.politicalforum.com/index.php
https://www.debatepolitics.com
http://www.usmessageboard.com
http://www.politicaljack.com
http://www.bullshit.com
Need more? I would recommend the last one.
8)
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What I think is different now is the presence of social media and web chat rooms which reflect back to people their own opinions and values. People now live in an echo chamber and become more than uncomfortable when their values are questioned.
This has always happened but seems more intense now.
I've wasted more of my life than I care to admit on internet discussions, and there has been a lot of pointless bickering, but I've learned a lot of stuff from people whose ideas were different to mine. It's self evident that nothing that anyone types in a forum such as this is reviewed for accuracy or logic. In the past (man, I sound old) it felt like there was a degree of self-censorship - people realised that since anyone could write anything the whole thing was pointless unless people only wrote what was reasonably supportable, one way or another.
What has changed (IMO) is that this gentleman's agreement is over. People type what they want, what serves their purpose, and the aim is no longer to present a reasoned argument to convince others. Quite the opposite - it's to create an environment where the very notion of "facts" is brought into question, where even the simplest of data (attendance at inauguration for example) is questioned. In that environment, the powerful (i.e. rich) can do what they want and everyone else is so confused they don't know where to begin to oppose it. I think the citizens of the USSR were well acquainted with this situation, and now the Coffee Corner has tasted it too.
For Lula, the answer may well be to close down this discussion; for society as a whole, the answer is less obvious!
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Delighted to read this. As a non-American member who has scant regard for the politics of his own country, let alone those of another, I just want to talk about photographs as and when then need strikes me.
Keep up the good work guys!
Gerry
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I had the privilege of moderating a climate change thread along with Ray for a couple of months earlier this year. It was a bittersweet experience as the focus was supposed to be on research findings. I tried to moderate it with a gentle touch with reminders but near the end of the 'experiment' had to delete some posts that were wildly off target. The thread was finally locked which was unfortunate. The owners of LuLa are within their rights in terms of what content is appropriate. Political threads are always problematic and I've seen more websites closing down comments because they inevitably spiral out of control. As one who experienced the polarization of the Vietnam war era, it is my view that we are seeing a reopening of the fault lines within the US. LuLa is a microcosm of this and the rawness of comments (I'm probably as blameworthy as others in this regard) illustrates the divide.
Certainly there may have been some records established for length of thread pages and I hope that the elimination of the political discussions does not markedly decrease the number of page visits and postings that would adversely impact LuLa's business model. ;)
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As much as I think the decision is unfortunate, I wish to thank you, Jeremy, for your moderating efforts so far.
I would like to add my name to that.
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Regarding referring to what Michael may or may not have done is a nonsense. LuLa has not been LuLa for quite some time, way before the political climate rose to temperate. No, that's neither a typo nor a mistake in adjective.
Had LuLa remained an act of love, divorced from the need to turn a buck, it would have probably stood still - perfectly pleasantly so, in my opinion - and pottered along with the same pretty big readership it had.
I obviously neither know nor want to know anything about its financial viability - my own concerns me enough; did it overstretch itself too ambitiously with its junkets to´Kina, Leica etc? who knows. Whatever, I get the impression that since turning into a pay-for, even in part, the climate has switched entirely away from a delightful "publish and be damned" one to a politically correct one that has debilitated it editorially as well as, now, within its relationship with long-time readers. When the moment arrives that the views and reactions of people who never post here have to be considered, well, it seems fairly clear to me that the relationship with members - as with the editorial, cannot but be compromised, however many up-front disclosures may be made. It just ain't the same game anymore.
Which is kinda disappointing. Doesn't more than one holy book point out that one cannot seve both God and Mammon?
Rob
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Regarding referring to what Michael may or may not have done is a nonsense.
Did you know him and if so, how well?
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Thank you. I have no doubt at all that Lula will a better place as a result of this change of policy.
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I would like to add my name to that.
Thanks, Rob.
Regarding referring to what Michael may or may not have done is a nonsense. LuLa has not been LuLa for quite some time, way before the political climate rose to temperate. No, that's neither a typo nor a mistake in adjective.
Had LuLa remained an act of love, divorced from the need to turn a buck, it would have probably stood still - perfectly pleasantly so, in my opinion - and pottered along with the same pretty big readership it had.
I obviously neither know nor want to know anything about its financial viability - my own concerns me enough; did it overstretch itself too ambitiously with its junkets to´Kina, Leica etc? who knows. Whatever, I get the impression that since turning into a pay-for, even in part, the climate has switched entirely away from a delightful "publish and be damned" one to a politically correct one that has debilitated it editorially as well as, now, within its relationship with long-time readers. When the moment arrives that the views and reactions of people who never post here have to be considered, well, it seems fairly clear to me that the relationship with members - as with the editorial, cannot but be compromised, however many up-front disclosures may be made. It just ain't the same game anymore.
Which is kinda disappointing. Doesn't more than one holy book point out that one cannot seve both God and Mammon?
Rob
I know nothing of the financial affairs of LuLa; I have no financial interest in it and I'm not paid for what I do. But I think you're being unfair. Financial concerns had no impact - none at all - on the way in which I moderated the political discussions and on not one single occasion did anyone in the company seek to place any pressure on me to act other than as I saw fit.
As you will have seen, I favoured a very light-touch approach. I can't agree with your description of the mood as temperate, though. By American standards it might have seemed so, but neither you nor I view the world through US prisms. To me, it was at times intolerable and for much of the time, tediously repetitive.
There are political sites where sterile arguments can be hearsed and rehearsed (joke). Politics doesn't have to infest every aspect of life, though.
Jeremy
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Politics doesn't have to infest every aspect of life, though.
Maybe a fresh reading of '1984' is needed. ;)
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Rob. LuLa is an act of love but it is also a business. Do you think servers, programmers, videographers and such are free? I live and breathe LuLa it is my passion and what I do every day. I do what I do to keep Michael's legacy alive. I knew Michael and we together worked out the business model and how we needed to proceed to keep LuLa alive. While other sites are disappearing we are still here. We have brought content to this site that wouldn't have been possible without the membership. The Leica story, The Master Series, The interview with Ed Burtynsky and the other video content, as well as everything else we do, is a result of having the ability to make this content.
This is a photography site and after an attempt to be somewhat flexible we found that the political talk was just not working and it was affecting the way people felt. So, we go back to the roots of what this site is about photography.
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Thank you Kevin, Jeremy and all admin. Good call.
My sole purpose joining this site was to learn ( and share, if possible ) photographic insights from better photographers than me. From anywhere around the world.
Kind regards and best wishes.
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I also agree with this choice. While I never mentioned it to the management team, I had made a personal choice to make no further contribution to LuLa, on the grounds that association with the political content on the Coffee Corner was not something I wanted. I gather that there were others who made the same choice, but more vocally.
Moderation is hard. Mostly people elect to moderate words, perhaps tone. Which means that those who can master the game get to say the most foul things
imaginable, because they can avoid the bad words, and salt in a sly, patently false but defensible, joking tone. People who actually care enough about anything to get emotionally involved are, paradoxically, punished. Endgame is a bunch of sly, mean-spirited people who don't actually care about anything sniping at one another. Everyone else has left or been banned.
Nobody needs to be associated with that. It's bad for business, it's bad for society, it's bad for us as individuals. Moderation, to be successful, must moderate meaning and intent, not words and tone, and even that is no guarantee.
Best to cut it out entirely.
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Did you know him and if so, how well?
Man, isn't that the point?
He came, he saw, he created and now is gone. Period.
Second-guessing the guy, however intimate you or anyone else might have been with him, is absurd, arrogant and totally speculative; in other words, it turns into a self-serving, ingratiating bleat in search of, hopefully, the reflected glory of being part of an in-crowd. Let the man rest in peace, unencumbered by attributed idiosynchracies he may or may not have wanted to have thrust upon him.
I don't know what anyone is going to do next, never mind what a dead person is going to do or might have done within a situation with which he is/was not confronted during the altered, utterly changed ethos of now.
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Man, isn't that the point?
He came, he saw, he created and now is gone. Period.
Second-guessing the guy, however intimate you or anyone else might have been with him, is absurd, arrogant and totally speculative; in other words, it turns into a self-serving, ingratiating bleat in search of, hopefully, the reflected glory of being part of an in-crowd. Let the man rest in peace, unencumbered by attributed idiosynchracies he may or may not have wanted to have thrust upon him.
I don't know what anyone is going to do next, never mind what a dead person is going to do or might have done within a situation with which he is/was not confronted during the altered, utterly changed ethos of now.
+1
It's sad enough that some people can't behave themselves on a public forum when Politics get involved, let's leave Michael out of it.
It's Kevin's show now (influenced by the late LuLa's Creator) and helped by Chris and others, so he can run it any way he sees fit.
Cheers,
Bart
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Man, isn't that the point?
He came, he saw, he created and now is gone. Period.
Second-guessing the guy, however intimate you or anyone else might have been with him, is absurd, arrogant and totally speculative; in other words, it turns into a self-serving, ingratiating bleat in search of, hopefully, the reflected glory of being part of an in-crowd. Let the man rest in peace, unencumbered by attributed idiosynchracies he may or may not have wanted to have thrust upon him.
I don't know what anyone is going to do next, never mind what a dead person is going to do or might have done within a situation with which he is/was not confronted during the altered, utterly changed ethos of now.
In other words, you didn’t know him?
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Kevin, Jeremy: I stated that I had no idea about the financials of LuLa and no interest. If you see my post in reply to Slobodan's you'll note that I put my name to thanking you for the way you moderated.
To those who complained about the content of the political threads: nobody asked you to read 'em; if you were unable to tear your eyes away from the slow train-crash, thank yourselves for lingering to watch. Why would you give a fig when you were under no obligation to play? Others, however, as the quantity of posting shows, enjoyed the tussle immensely.
Has it struck none of you complainers just how proscriptive you come across as being? You want to deny others a legal pleasure you can't share.
And you know what? You proved that if you bitch enough, you can do a lot of harm to freedoms that were legitimate.
Now, Kevin, unless my grey cells are more pale than I thought, wasn't it you who wrote that you had been having bad vibes come your way from sources that provide support to LuLa? That sounds like business pressures to me, probably far more worthy of attention than any from the neo-puritans here who are just civilians, exactly as am I.
Of course I understand nothing is for nothing; I ran a business too. As I have often stated, the site belongs to the owners to do with as they wish. That's sacrosanct - as far as finance permits! That said, I'd feel very disappointed that, if there have been no external business pressures to do as you have done (to close specific debates) you have then acted solely because of pressures from the politically correct amongst us. I kind of ask myself what some of them have offered LuLa in the past that makes them feel they have a right to force change.
I may be missing something, but I don't seem able to think of many complainants who have actually written very much worth reading or even just written very much about anything; as for posting images... so, armchair warriors. Maybe I just need to wear my specs more, but who exactly are we missing today because of political threads? I can name some damned good photographers who just had enough and picked up their tents and vanished, but it had nothing to do with political threads!
For the record: my own contributions to the naughty threads has been pretty slim, all things considered, because it doesn't interest me all that much; but it does interest me when people want to crush what others enjoy, and I'm pretty sure that sans our ultra-vocal whited sepulchres united in song, life would have continued perfectly happily with the fizzy stuff being splashed about in the political bath without harming anyone at all.
Just an opinion.
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In other words, you didn’t know him?
Heysoos, you still don't understand a goddam thing I've told you, explained to you and hoped you'd grasp.
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Heysoos, you still don't understand a goddam thing I've told you, explained to you and hoped you'd grasp.
Your inability to answer a simple question with yes or no speaks volumes and I'll simply have to assume you never met him.
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Your inability to answer a simple question with yes or no speaks volumes and I'll simply have to assume you never met him.
I recommend Bose; you can control volumes to taste. Better yet, you can listen to anything you like and assume for all you are worth. And don't forget: if you don't like something, you can also just switch off Without Upsetting Anyone Else! But that's no fun...
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I recommend Bose; you can control volumes to taste.
Thanks but I own no less than four Bose products. No thanks for recommending something I didn't ask about and have experience with, too bad it's like pulling teeth to get a simple yes or no answer from you. I'll keep listening to my various Bose products while continuing to assume you and Michael never met. Which is a shame for you.
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Please close this thread.
Once again, it has turned into a political platform in which only one side, closer to the owners’ political ethos, is allowed to continue attacks on the other side.
The decision has been made, seems irrevocable, thus nothing to discuss. Those who want to pat owners on the back can do so behind the scene, in PMs, as they did when pressuring for the close of politics.
As for those who think that spewing vulgarities is the superior indicator of how much they care, and who clamor for policing meaning and intent... well, I’d love to show you just how much I care, but that would probably ban me from LuLa permanently, which I am on the verge to do myself, but not there yet.
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Please close this thread.
The decision has been made, seems irrevocable, thus nothing to discuss.
+1 to the specific request and opinion below it.
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Please close this thread.
Once again, it has turned into a political platform in which only one side, closer to the owners’ political ethos, is allowed to continue attacks on the other side.
The decision has been made, seems irrevocable, thus nothing to discuss. Those who want to pat owners on the back can do so behind the scene, in PMs, as they did when pressuring for the close of politics.
As for those who think that spewing vulgarities is the superior indicator of how much they care, and who clamor for policing meaning and intent... well, I’d love to show you just how much I care, but that would probably ban me from LuLa permanently, which I am on the verge to do myself, but not there yet.
+1; the managers of the site don't need any further distractions of this type even though the 'Coffee Corner' was generating more web hits than the technical forums over the past several months. The technical threads are what I've always valued and that value seems to be decreasing each day; but that's a different story.
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For reference I, at any rate, am very clearly NOT clamoring for policing meaning and intent. But it does seem to be true that the thread is degenerating into thinly veiled personal attacks.
ETA: Perhaps it is worth here noting that my remarks earlier about moderation are based on, arg, 29 years now of banging around in various forums. While there are a handful of people on LuLa who lean distinctly in the direction I alluded to (and I can name names on both sides of the spectrum) my remarks were far more broadly based.
Notably, on another forum, I was harassed over the course of several years by a fellow who had mastered the form. There were weeks in which I could literally not post without Charlie replying with a jokey/snarky harassing followup. Because he'd mastered the art of staying on one side of the line, and because the policies were structured in terms of specific words and specific tone it took about two years of steady, obvious, harassment, for Charlie to get banned, by which point people other than myself had been openly remarking on Charlie's behavior, and describing it as a campaign of continuous harassment.
But this is just another, albeit clearer, example of what I have absorbed over decades of experience in perhaps a dozen different forums.
Moderation is hard.
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Rob, You have been a great contributor to the site. If you are not happy with my replies, decisions etc. then so be it. It is my site and I do what I believe is right for the site. We have all heard you and your feelings. If you don't like the what I have decided then you can elect to not participate in this forum. This is a site about photography, something based on what I have seen of your work you are very good at. Please feel free to share your knowledge with the folks on this forum.
This site is going to be about photography and that's all there is to it. Now let's get back to it.
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Thank you moderators for closing down political topics. Unfortunately, political topics almost always end up heated, non productive and derogatory. While I have a definite view, I have not posted so as to not flame the fires or end up in a pointless argument.
Back to photography...
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Thank you moderators for closing down political topics. Unfortunately, political topics almost always end up heated, non productive and derogatory. While I have a definite view, I have not posted so as to not flame the fires or end up in a pointless argument.
Back to photography...
Let me second this and add my thanks. Finally correcting a mistake that was made when political topics were allowed in the first place. There are plenty of appropriate forums for that; this isn't one of them. In my opinion of course.
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I've lost very dear friends due to political differences, I do not want to loose friends here.
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Please close this thread.
Done.
Sometimes, I despair of the possibility of civilised discussion. It doesn't appear to be possible even to be reasonable in a discussion about discussions.
Jeremy